Daily catch-up: Good result for Jim McMahon and Jeremy Corbyn in Oldham

Plus the Jess Phillips fan club and why the Middle East is our affair

Good result for Jim McMahon, the Labour candidate and possible future Labour leader, in Oldham West last night. A good result for Jeremy Corbyn: journalists who went to the constituency couldn't find anyone with a good word to say for him, but he didn't put people off voting Labour. A bad result for UKIP, which is now finished. The only point of UKIP is to take Britain out of the EU, a question that will be decided by the British people in a referendum in the next two years. And a bad result for the party of government, as is traditional in by-elections.

• The best comment on Wednesday's vote on air strikes in Syria came from Jess Phillips, the Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley:

I voted against, let's just get that out of the way ... I'm not revelling in my decision, I'm living with it. I'm not pleased to see the hyperbolic back-slapping righteous tweets of some at the top of my party speaking of death tolls, and civilian losses. I don't like any language about this being blood on our hands or any such platitude. People will die no matter what decision was made. Feeling right won't stop the death toll. People will die at the hands of Daesh in the east and west regardless of our vote. I won't sleep sounder tonight feeling righteous any more than I did last night feeling worried.

Julie Burchill admires Phillips almost as much as I do, and has interviewed her for Spectator Life. Burchill thinks Phillips is also a possible future Labour leader. Burchill has some good lines, including a swipe at Diane Abbott, with whom Phillips clashed, for "speaking power to truth in order to advance her career".

• Tony Blair delivered the Kissinger lecture at the Library of Congress in Washington last night. Another powerful restatement of the case for engagement rather than isolation:

Sometimes we look at the Middle East and see such a mess we prefer to stay out. Paris – as if we needed further reminding – shows the futility of that.

The Middle East’s harsh and tumultuous transition is our affair: because it is near to us, because it is where the heart of Islam beats, because we have our own large Muslim populations, because we have allies – not only Israel but Arab nations too – who expect and deserve our support and whose support we need to succeed; and because if we don't act, then into the vacuum will step those whose interests and values may be opposed to our own.

It is better to see the Middle East and indeed Islam as in a long process of transition – the Middle East to achieve rule based economies and religiously tolerant societies; and Islam to recover its rightful place as a faith of progress and humanity.

Looked at in this way, this is not an impenetrable mess to stay clear of; but a life and death struggle in which our own interests are intimately engaged.

• Moose Allain ‏carried out an important Twitter poll the other day:

Do you know how to spell Yves correctly?

Yves 50%

Nvo 50%

• And finally, thanks to Merry Frizmas ‏for this:

"I know about Yards of Ale, but is there such thing as a metre of vodka? I know it sounds like a long shot."